Junta42 recently had an interesting blog post regarding the concept of crowdsourcing—which it calls “the buzzword of 2010.” What is crowdsourcing, you may ask?

I’m glad you asked.

The term crowdsourcing was first coined by a 2006 Wired magazine article by Jeff Howe. Essentially, it’s when a brand reaches out to consumers to either solve a problem with one of its products, or even come up with new products or technologies. Get it? It’s like outsourcing, but to a crowd.

An example would be the uTest Bug Battle, a quarterly software testing competition where software testers from all over the globe compete to find bugs in today’s most popular web browsers, mobile phone apps, gaming apps, etc. As a result, bugs have been discovered and subsequently fixed in Facebook, MySpace, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox … the list goes on. Perhaps due to the time of year, the most recent Battle took place in November, where software testers competed to find bugs in the world’s top internet retailers: Amazon.com, Walmart.com and Target.com. Happy Holidays!

Seems genius, doesn’t it? I thought so too. The Junta42 post seemed to think so as well, but also seemed to suggest there was a rivalry between proponents of content marketing and those of crowdsourcing. But why would that be?

Perhaps it’s my youthful ignorance, but let’s put aside the issues of the economic downturn and shrinking marketing budgets. Wouldn’t combining content marketing with some sort of crowdsourcing endeavor be a great opportunity? Like Junta42’s post says, you need to use quality, targeted content marketing to reach your perfect target audience. Ideally, your content will educate your consumers on your specific industry and your own particular line of products or services. Your consumers will grow to trust you and rely on you for information. After you have educated your audience, you present them with a problem or challenge related to your niche, and you watch your little babies fly. They brainstorm and come up with an array of solutions for you. You grow to trust them. You sleep soundly at night knowing you have reached your target group of consumers, and they feel a sense of pride and ownership over their new ideas. Talk about a strong, healthy and productive business-consumer relationship!

At the end of the day, isn’t that the whole point of marketing anyway?

This entry was posted on Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 11:54 am and is filed under Content Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.